Picture this...

I'm walking through a Dwemer ruin that hasn't been disturbed for hundreds of years. Dust is everywhere, occasionally the dwemer automated defenses come at me. I chance upon a chest that is locked. I break the lock open and find... SEPTIMS!

WTH?

What is wrong with you Bethesda? You already solved this problem in Morrowind. DWEMER [censored] COINS! The Dwemer did not use septims. Goodness has the intelligence level at Bethesda gone down or what?

It was the septim fairy.

"hasn't been disturbed for hundreds of years"

Well to be fair, in Oblivion the game used septims, and those events took place 200 years ago. Plus the empire ingeneral has been around for several hundreds of years before that. So it is possible to find septims...

Why would I find septims in a locked chest in a dwemer ruin?

Oblivion svcked. In my mind it never happened.

You do not find Septims, you find "Gold"... (with Tiber Septim's face on them, but I pretend he isn't there and move on)

http://forum.cheatengine.org/files/imagination_408.png

The only reasonable explanation OP.

This, really. Didn't even know Septim's face was on 'em.

Yeah, I was a little 'wtf' when i found a book in a dwemer ruin that was written in the 3rd era...

Not in Dwemer ruins that are even older than the Empire it isn't.

The OP has a point. It's a bit of a dumb point, but it is still very valid.

Who says they hadn't been disturbed in that long?

Maybe bandits moved in for a while, but were killed out before too long by the defenses. 200-ish years is a very reasonable amount of time for lots of cobwebs and stuff to build up.
Same for the book. Who says you were the first person since the Dwemer to step foot in that ruin?

I have encountered this problem too.
With books that were written in the third era and absence of Dwemer coins.

I imagined its due to centuries and centuries of looting and making the ruins a hide-out.
Falmer live their, maybe also vampires, bandits and the like have had a go in the past.
And.. adventurers clearing the most valuable stuff out.
Coins are relatively light and valuable.

It's quite possible some of them have been explored in the 3rd era. I mean, one of the cities is built on top of a dwemer ruin, and many are extremely close. I'm sure SOMEONE has gone in there in the 300+ years between the disappearance of the dwemer and the events of Skyrim.

This seems like a flaw.

i like to think that the spider workers go out when nobody is looking and steal modern money so nobody thinks the dwemer were poor.

yeah, i miss dwemer coins to. they were fairly valuable so they were a perfect substitute for normal monetary loot. considering the lengths they went to to showcase the culture of the other races, im surprised they didnt bring dwemer coins back to show just how isolated they were.